The Source of Klan Sentiment
Ford, Henry J.
78 THE COMMONWEAL November z6, 1924 Conscience Plays...
...It is only against the Catholic Church that geographical distinctions are drawn and the cry of foreign interference is raised when ecclesiastical action transcends national boundaries...
...As the play actually stands, and without any subtle reading between the lines, it is a story of fatalism—the helpless merging of an individual life into some great movement of the cosmos— the acceptance of external realities as the only measure of the value of life—and a plea, if you will, for the most fatal pacifism of the soul...
...It will be a very pleasant experience to see Miss Foster in a play that is worthy of her...
...There are two sets of loyalties constantly bidding for the control of American Catholics...
...This is too stiff a task for any anc...
...Its method is to hold the Catholic Church responsible for outrageous acts done by Catholics and to treat outrageous acts done by Protestants 4• .be.ng1rnstans~svoLi ijviividual ,ddll~qucncy., - ~.But.if we kccp to matters within the range of ira79 telligent judgment, it is ccrtainly a reasonable opinion that a citizen who has help and guidance from an institution whose jurisprudence rcllects the experience of nearly twenty centuries is safer than one whose conduct is controlled by the enthusiasms and antipathies of the hour—just as a man who consults a prudent solicitor bcforc taking an important step is more likely to keep out of trouble than he who acts from casual impulse...
...Their claim is always that their purpose is above and beyond differences of nec or nationality...
...THE SOURCE OF KLAN SENTIMENT By HENRY J. FORD The Ku Klux Klan, by John Moffat: Mecklin, Ph...
...At one period one sponsor alone ~as thought best to signify the Unity of God: three at another, to represent the blessed Trinity...
...The longest chapter in the book is devoted to this subject, and in it we are told that the Catholic Church has these peculiarities— It is an ecclesiastical super-nationalism directed from a centre outside the bounds of American society...
...Thcmcs for eulogy have been found in resistance to law even on issues not directly involving religious Opinion...
...Conscience tells the story of an I. W. W. fanatic, who, having been separated from his wife by arrest, and finding on his return six months later that she has fallen by the wayside—not knowing the cause of his long absence—kills her rather than see her follow the life of pleasure she has learned to love...
...If one can escape from stereotyped ideas and see things as they are, it soon appears that these arc not peculiarities at all but are the common characteristics of every active ecclesiastical system...
...Even scientific history labors heavily undcr it, and popular history recks with error and partiality...
...On the one hand, we have the intimate spiritual and institutional life of the Church with its international ramifications...
...MECKtLLN'S study of the Klan is much the best treatise which has appeared on this subject...
...DR...
...Ignorance is the sole source of honest antagonism to the Catholic Church...
...on the other, the practical civic and social life of American Catholics as members of American society...
...But he has not, as a more skilful dramatist would have done, indicated the contrast of a sounder belief...
...What is this but super-nationalism...
...If the Church were as well known on the American countryside as it is in the cities, it would be as impossible to organize Kiaverns in the United States as it would be now in Germany...
...Miss Foster has made the utmost of rather poor material...
...A Knight's Life hi the Days of Chivalry, by Walter Clifford Melter, New York: Greenberg, Inc...
...When Canning introduced his bill for gradual emancipation in the West Indies he acknowledged his indebtedness to Spanish precedents which he characterized as a model of humane proccdurc...
...He bean witness to "the unimpeachable patriotism of American Catholics," and he declares that "there is no more preposterous assumption than that put forward by Klan leaders to the effect that the Catholic church is a menace to the sovereignty of the American nation...
...The Methodist church may remove Dr...
...This is an aspect of the case which usually escapes noticc because all that people generally think about is the tremendous conflict which did occur in the Reformation period, from conditions which have so completely disappeared that it is now almost impossible to realize their character...
...On no point arc Protestant divines so strong as that one should serve God rather than man...
...No, the distinctions noted by Dr...
...He says truly that "the prob 1cm of the Klan is the problem of stubborn, uncritical mental stereotypes...
...It is interesting to see how Conscience, which has as its backround I. W. W. agitation in the Northwest, tries to meet and absorb the current mood and thus effect a compromise between the old and the new...
...Dcnominarional history cnlarges with great gusto upon heroic conflicts with secular authority resulting from devotion to religious principles...
...For although the Klan antagonizes Jews and Negroes also, Dr...
...Mecklin calls attcntion to the fact that it is just where Catholics arc fewest and where there is least knowledge about dxc Church as a working institution that prejudice is strongest...
...November 26, 1924 THE COMMONWEAL Not even a Klansman would be so steeped in prejudice as to hold that Methodist missions directed from thc United States have because of that fact a moral status different from that of Wesicyan missions directed from England, or Presbyterian missions directed from Scotland...
...Sometimes the first morsel given the child was placed in his mouth at the point of his fattier's sword, to promote, it was said, a martial disposition in the infant...
...As the play stands, it is obviously a story of utter disillusionment...
...In no place where Catholic influence prevailed was it an issue which arrayed citizens against the authority of the state or left permanent ~vounds upon the body-politic...
...It is clear that he thinks the Klan is not wrong in holding that there is an essential incompatibility between Catholic faith and one hundred percent Americanism, although he does not agree with the Klan that this has practical importance...
...The removal of Bishop Keane from the rectorship of the Catholic University is exhIbited as a startling instance of foreign interference...
...Here in the loneliness and desolation, his mind begins to fail him...
...8.oo...
...For he goes on to say that there is some justification of anti-Catholic sentiment in certain peculiarities of the Catholic Church...
...Mecidin is undoubtedly right in holding that the great spread of the Klan is not due to the attractiveness of its original design, but to the success of its management in tapping deep streams of prejudice and calumny in the hearts of the people—the sad heritage of the wars of religion...
...Mecklin discusses it at lcngth...
...78 THE COMMONWEAL November z6, 1924 Conscience Plays dealing with soda...
...ghosts and memories come to haunt his seclusion...
...Any other supposition would be energetically denied...
...Mecklin do not in fact exist...
...A great body of literature, in prose and in versc, celebrates the insubordination of the Puritans...
...Most of the Protestant sects of our times originated as revolts against religious observance prescribed by the statc, and they love to tell about it...
...What the nuns thought of this procedure was not recorded...
...Mecidin finds that "the Klan's anti-Catholic propaganda has won for it more members than anything else...
...And is it not true, that in these times when political issues arc hinging on social and economic questions of far-reaching importance, the advice of the Catholic Church is felt as a moderating influcncc promoting orderly adjustments...
...He then exiles himself to a cabin in the Yukon...
...The remedy for darkness is not argument but light...
...To see the facts in their "proper perspective you must understand Christendom and the Catholic Church, the Holy Roman cmpire and the Feudal system, as they existed and were understood in the Middle Ages...
...questions, labor agitation and corrupt politics are fortunately not as frequent today as they were some ten years ago...
...BRIEFER MENTION...
...Most of the dramatists are now dealing with highly personal problems, particularly problems of character formation, of the conflict of psychological types, and of the turmoil and restlessness in the individual soul...
...and he at length commits suicide by going out into the man-killing storm, repeating one of his wife's last phrases—"As long as you've got to die, what difference does it make how...
...1.75...
...The poiicy of Spain in that particular was due to the influence of the Catholic Church...
...What is peculiar is the power and extent of the means which Catholicism possesses for obv[ating such conflict...
...And then he supplies evidence that kl~.hough he doesn't 'kno* it,>ont of those sterers types is pressing on his own mind...
...The penetrating character of anti-Catholic prejudice is unconsciously exemplified by Dr...
...The council of Trent at last decided that two sponsors only should be appointed...
...Mecklin himself, despite his honesty of purpose...
...Conscience has served but one useful purpose—to bring before us a character actress of exceptional ability and personal charm...
...Which is to take precedence...
...As to that all observers are agreed...
...It gathers the facts thoroughly, arranges them well, surveys them calmly, and it tries hard to weigh them honestly...
...On the other hand, all sensible men are now agreed that the fanatic violence with which this matter was treated in our own country has had miserable results...
...Without her the play would bc an impossibly dull hodge-podge...
...It seems that the babies wcre immediately washed and bound up in ligatures after the manner practised in the classk days of Rome, as shown in the frescoes unearthed at Pompeii...
...And Catholic influence extended much farther than is commonly supposed...
...THIS volume of studies on A Knight's Life in the Days of Chivalry includes among number of interesting items an account of the customs of childbirth in these simple honest days...
...There is a school of New England writers whose works acol mob uprisings against the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and relate the particulars with marked relish...
...If we turn now to consider how far practical expericnce bears out this theoretical presumption, thc abolition of slavery presents itself as a good case in point...
...It was considered proper to baptize the new-born infant before it took any nourishment whatever...
...There is no case on record in which missionaries have been willing to admit that their concern was the national advantage of the country from which they came...
...As to the "two sets of loyalties," every man who has a conscience is subject to them...
...Due chiefly, I think, to the extraordinarily fine acting of Lilian Foster, a newcomer on the New York stage, Madeline stands out as a character of real importance...
...An attempt to do that encounters exactly the same difficulties which Bernard Shaw mentions in thc case of Saint Joan...
...There were zealots who agreed with Garrison in denouncing the Constitution as a covenant with death and an agreement with Hell, bccausc it recognized the legal status of slavery...
...Any religious society in the United States sufficiently interested in the spread of its doctrines to send a missionary to a foreign field thereby enters upon a career of "ecclesiastical super-nationalism...
...It is quite possible that the author intended to show the complete futility of the philosophy of anarchy, its lack of sustaining power, and its destructive effect on the entire life of a man...
...There is nothing peculiar in the position of Catholics as regards the possibility of conflict between religious obligation and the duty of civic obedicncc...
...D. New York: 1-larcour:, Brace and Company...
...Tipple from his post at Rome without incurring reproach...
...As to that, it makes no difference whether the jurisdictional centre is inside or "outside of the bounds of American society...
...However good and great that seat' of religious authority maybe' it~ is~ nolyct the new Jerusalem, and it is not entitled to special' privileges...
...Her acting is so good that you are rarely conscious of it...
Vol. 1 • November 1924 • No. 3
